Nature Seychelles

P4O founders spent two years leading a large-scale reef-restoration project implemented by the conservation NGO Nature Seychelles and funded by USAID and the United Nations Development Program. Since its implementation in 2010, the project has planted over 24,000 corals on the reef of Cousin Island in the Republic of Seychelles.

In 2016, we experienced the devastating impacts of climate change, witnessing the reef being wiped-out by a severe heat wave during the 2015/17 El Niño event. We collected and analyzed weekly data on coral response to heat stress during seven consecutive months of monitoring effort. Following the heat stress, we implemented an emergency coral restoration plan adapted to boost reef recovery post mass-bleaching:

Live fragments of opportunity (naturally detached) and naturally dislodged colonies were collected, fragmented and seeded onto a nursery for one year, allowing fragments to grow into full-sizes coral colonies. Through these actions, we generated and replanted nearly 3,000 heat-resistant corals. To learn more about the Reef Rescuers Project, click here.

Manual removal of seaweeds was regularly undertaken on the designer reef to "make some room" for potential coral larvae, allowing them to recruit the area and settle onto the reef, further improving recovery at the scale of the ecosystem.

Controls of predator populations were addressed: Over 200 Crown-of-Thorns starfish (Acanthaster planci) were injected with lethal doses of vinegar in order to avoid further coral mortality on a resilient site. Manual collection of nearly 2,000 coral-eating snailsDrupella spp. were necessary to restore normal population densities, more balanced with the low coral cover on the designer reef after bleaching-related mortality.

Six Senses ZIL pASYON

In October 2017, 1863 coral-fragments were seeded into a coral-nursery within the Marine Park of Felicity Island. Those fragments were collected from donor corals made vulnerable from infestation by the coral-eating snail Drupella spp. During the 12-months period of coral-growth, the nursery will be visited by guests and local Seychellois via snorkeling or scuba diving and allow to raise awareness about the world's coral crisis.The transplantation of the nursery-grown corals is scheduled for the end of 2018, when fully grown colonies will be securely cemented to the seafloor onto granite ridges and boulders, restoring 600 square meters of fringing reef previously degraded by the 2016 El Nino, a climatic event responsible for widespread coral mortality in the Seychelles inner islands and worldwide.​ This new coral garden will naturally recruit marine life such as reef fish, crustaceans and even coral larvae from nearby areas. It will also become an attractive site for more spectacular animals like sea turtles, rays and reef sharks. Regular data collection and scientific monitoring will allow to assess the extend of this project's conservation achievements. Read more about this project here.